- Feb 21, 2019
- 10
- 26
I don't often leave comments on anything here, though I have had the opportunity to enjoy various efforts brought to us by a host of talented and semi-talented folks here and there, but I suppose I will chime in as have others.
Knowing that criticism, even constructive can be a bitter pill to swallow for any artist, no matter the medium, I will make sure to keep things as polite as humanly possible.
The positives are easy of course, the creator has developed a beautiful style to his art that probably makes everyone wish all games were rendered as wonderfully. There is a definite cinematic artistry to the work that creates moments in a scene that can easily leave you forgetting its a "game" at all. And that kind of immersion takes talent and an artistic eye.
The negatives are harder to convey without sounding overly critical, but I'll try my best. The MC, oh where to begin? Of all the returning character designs we are given, this has to be in my own humble opinion the worst. I could hardly accept what I was seeing, but there was no mistake. Everything that would eventually become the original form your character took on by the end of the first pass of this AV was tossed out, and in it's place we are given this laughably unrecognizable fellow. I won't go into some painful diatribe of specifics, suffice to say, my humble advice would be to return to the drawing board and model him on his twin better than you have. For someone who is supposed to be related to Leia, I don't think you could have missed the mark any further, unless you changed his ethnicity.
Writing is for the most part...fair, but my word there are too many exchanges which feel so forced and inorganic when it comes to true dialogue between people. And some of the prose is almost too painful to muddle through, such as those times when Miru sounds like a cross between some new-age guru and the nonsensical wisdom found in a fortune cookie. I honestly expect at anytime the MC, or other characters to turn on their heel and ask, "What in the hell are you talking about?" And I am fairly certain nowhere in the world does someone tipple into a room as a means of entry. Not sure if that is a spelling error or some form of slang I'm just unfamiliar with.
The story...hard to say at this point, as I'm aware that the creator believed much needed to change with regards to that. I can certainly understand and respect the desire to tweak, or maybe even entirely scrap what came before in favor of some new sense of direction or creative muse. But honestly, I believe this was a mistake. I can't recall a legion of displeased fans screaming for story changes in the old game. I'm sure every endeavor has detractors and harsh critics, but I truly believe you had more earnest fans than nay-sayers before. The story had a flow, it had mystery, romance, sex, and all of the right literary elements that make people thoroughly enjoy adult visual novels like this. I for one never saw Miru as a scapegoat for fetishists, especially as you allowed for the option to exclude it. I felt the original story was paced better, and moved us towards some answers in a timely fashion, while also giving us moments of charming flirtation, sexual tension, delightful humor and even emotional drama. And while I accept the newly released effort is very early in its development and nowhere near as heavy in content as before, it felt like a beautiful but empty cup by the time we arrived with the MC and Miru at the old neighborhood.
In short, we got less not more as fans for our patient waiting. We got style in place of substance, and that, in any act of creation is a poor choice at best.
I hope I have kept the vitriol to a minimum, and I would like to wish you a speedy recovery and good fortune moving forward with your work. All of this is of course, nothing more than one man's opinion and so should be taken as it was intended and nothing more. Your work is just that, your work. In the end it will be whatever you decide best represents your vision. I pray you have the drive and the time to see it to its completion.
Respectfully,
Marcaid
Knowing that criticism, even constructive can be a bitter pill to swallow for any artist, no matter the medium, I will make sure to keep things as polite as humanly possible.
The positives are easy of course, the creator has developed a beautiful style to his art that probably makes everyone wish all games were rendered as wonderfully. There is a definite cinematic artistry to the work that creates moments in a scene that can easily leave you forgetting its a "game" at all. And that kind of immersion takes talent and an artistic eye.
The negatives are harder to convey without sounding overly critical, but I'll try my best. The MC, oh where to begin? Of all the returning character designs we are given, this has to be in my own humble opinion the worst. I could hardly accept what I was seeing, but there was no mistake. Everything that would eventually become the original form your character took on by the end of the first pass of this AV was tossed out, and in it's place we are given this laughably unrecognizable fellow. I won't go into some painful diatribe of specifics, suffice to say, my humble advice would be to return to the drawing board and model him on his twin better than you have. For someone who is supposed to be related to Leia, I don't think you could have missed the mark any further, unless you changed his ethnicity.
Writing is for the most part...fair, but my word there are too many exchanges which feel so forced and inorganic when it comes to true dialogue between people. And some of the prose is almost too painful to muddle through, such as those times when Miru sounds like a cross between some new-age guru and the nonsensical wisdom found in a fortune cookie. I honestly expect at anytime the MC, or other characters to turn on their heel and ask, "What in the hell are you talking about?" And I am fairly certain nowhere in the world does someone tipple into a room as a means of entry. Not sure if that is a spelling error or some form of slang I'm just unfamiliar with.
The story...hard to say at this point, as I'm aware that the creator believed much needed to change with regards to that. I can certainly understand and respect the desire to tweak, or maybe even entirely scrap what came before in favor of some new sense of direction or creative muse. But honestly, I believe this was a mistake. I can't recall a legion of displeased fans screaming for story changes in the old game. I'm sure every endeavor has detractors and harsh critics, but I truly believe you had more earnest fans than nay-sayers before. The story had a flow, it had mystery, romance, sex, and all of the right literary elements that make people thoroughly enjoy adult visual novels like this. I for one never saw Miru as a scapegoat for fetishists, especially as you allowed for the option to exclude it. I felt the original story was paced better, and moved us towards some answers in a timely fashion, while also giving us moments of charming flirtation, sexual tension, delightful humor and even emotional drama. And while I accept the newly released effort is very early in its development and nowhere near as heavy in content as before, it felt like a beautiful but empty cup by the time we arrived with the MC and Miru at the old neighborhood.
In short, we got less not more as fans for our patient waiting. We got style in place of substance, and that, in any act of creation is a poor choice at best.
I hope I have kept the vitriol to a minimum, and I would like to wish you a speedy recovery and good fortune moving forward with your work. All of this is of course, nothing more than one man's opinion and so should be taken as it was intended and nothing more. Your work is just that, your work. In the end it will be whatever you decide best represents your vision. I pray you have the drive and the time to see it to its completion.
Respectfully,
Marcaid
